Such Sweet Sorrow by Catrin Collier Read Free Book Online

last night,’ Tony commiserated. ‘We couldn’t even talk to Mama. All she did was cry, in between threatening to go down the recruiting office and tell whoever’s in charge that Angelo’s only seventeen.’
    ‘Will she?’ William asked, worried because he had vouched for Angelo’s age.
    ‘She changed her mind after Angelo pointed out that if she did, he’d only have to go later without us.’
    ‘Happy families.’
    ‘Sometimes I think it would have been easier to have been born an orphan.’
    ‘It’s not as though we’ll be away that long.’
    ‘Didn’t you read the Observer this week? Article there reckons the war will last three years.’
    ‘Three years!’ William tried to imagine three years away from Pontypridd, three long years without Tina. He couldn’t. It stretched before him, an unimaginable time span.
    ‘Of course it may not last quite that long.’ Tony didn’t sound at all convincing.
    ‘You beginning to wish that you hadn’t joined up?’
    ‘Are you?’ Tony answered flatly, turning the question on him.
    ‘No,’ William asserted too insistently. ‘Besides, what’s done is done.’
    ‘I wish I had a pound for every time I’ve heard that today. Is Charlie sorry he went with us?’
    ‘You know Charlie, he never says a word about anything important.’
    ‘You think they’ll take him after that second interview next week?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ William’s attention focused on Tina who had finally emerged from the kitchen. She was wearing her best coat and hat, had put on pink lipstick, dabbed powder on her nose, and he could smell the ‘essence of violets’ scent she was wearing from where he was sitting. Surely she wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble if she intended to turn down his offer of an engagement ring.
    It was cold and wet waiting for the Cardiff bus on Broadway. William tried to huddle under Tina’s umbrella but even that turned into further cause for argument. When he angled it to suit his six-foot-three frame, the wind and rain blew under the cover and soaked Tina’s hat and hair, and if she put it at a comfortable level for herself, the spokes stuck into his chin or eyes. Both of them were glad when the bus finally came.
    ‘Upstairs, front seat?’ He ran up the narrow metal staircase ahead of her so she couldn’t accuse him of trying to look up her skirt, and he remembered to stand back so she could take her favourite inside seat. ‘You thought any more about last night?’ he asked as he dug into his pocket for money to pay the conductor.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Do you want to get engaged?’ he whispered, afraid of being overheard by the other passengers.
    ‘I told you I want to marry you.’
    ‘That’s not what I asked.’
    ‘If you don’t want to marry me, you don’t have to,’ she snapped tartly.
    ‘It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that I could be away for years.’
    ‘At last, a man who’s finally prepared to admit that this war is going to last longer than six months.’
    ‘No one knows how long it’s going to last,’ he retorted irritably.
    ‘If I’m prepared to marry you and wait as long as it takes for you to come home, you should be grateful, and not insist on a stupid engagement. A half-measure that’s neither one thing nor the other.’
    ‘You been talking to Diana?’
    ‘No, why?’
    ‘Nothing. It’s just that I’d rather you were free while you waited.’
    ‘Because of what happened to your father?’
    ‘Yes.’ There was a pathetic look on his face that tore at her heartstrings. She simply couldn’t bring herself to compound his misery a moment longer.
    ‘We shouldn’t be spending what little time we have left quarrelling,’ she declared, finally capitulating and hooking her arm into his.
    He knew then that Tony hadn’t said a word to Tina about marrying Diana. If he had, she would have brought it up and used it as yet one more argument in favour of a hastily arranged wedding.
    ‘Do you want to get a